I am as keen on following football as the next man. While I am not a super-fan (no scarves decorate the walls and I am not a regular traveller to away matches) I do possess two Swansea City mugs and was for a few years, when I could still afford it, a season ticket holder for the Swans. So it is as a friend of association football that I react with sad resignation to headlines such as this: Euro soccer tournament under fire for helping spread Covid-19. Soccer has had an elevated status on a level with friends of government ministers when it comes to relief from public health restrictions, it seems. One recalls that the first wave of the UK epidemic was potentiated by allowing the March 2020 match between Liverpool and Atletico Madrid to go ahead (along with the Cheltenham Festival), when Spain was already known to be a hot-spot for the virus.
While many people who have established roots in communities in England and Wales have difficulty proving to the Home Office that they have a right to stay, the visa exemption for sportsmen has clearly been interpreted liberally. Many football league clubs would not be in the position they are without their cohorts of jobbing footballers from outside the UK.
The inference is that the money made by big corporations from the sport via various media has influenced the present government to override sensible precautions.
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